One of those games where you could not see Argyle scoring and the longer it went, the more I feared a breakaway goal from them nicking the ball from us in our own half.
Canavan came closet with the header they cleared off the line in the first half and it was really disappointing that their Keeper never had a save to make in the second half, Telford’s token shot on goal was barely more than a back pass.
There is a very obvious reluctance to shoot from around the edge of the box and attacking moves constantly break down with Argyle playing one pass too many. It is not helped when Byron Moore constantly runs away from goal back towards the halfway line to take a ball which he immediately plays back to Canavan or Bakinson. A player with his pace should sit on the shoulder of the last defender and look to get down the side of him.
Mayor worked very hard and tried to provide a spark but as we have seen all season, he always has 2 if not 3 opponents around him. Unfortunately, all season we have not been able to take advantage of the space this creates elsewhere because of the slowness of our passing and movement.
We have had 2 really good chances to break into the top 3 this week and we have not been good enough. Cheltenham play their game in hand at home on Tuesday and if they win, they will be right up behind us. It’s going to get tighter and tighter going for that third place behind Swindon and Crewe and I don’t think we are quite strong enough.
We failed to adapt to the conditions at Macclesfield on Tuesday night and were indebted to Palmer to get a slightly fortunate point. Today, we looked pretty toothless trying to break down a very well drilled defence and might have been caught by a sucker goal on the break by a better team than Cambridge.
Neither the heavy pitch at Macclesfield or Cambridge setting up for a point can have been a surprise to Lowe, yet he could not come up with a winning formula for either game which is a concern. He is very one-dimensional and intransigent with his tactics. We are now at the business end of the season where it’s all about results. We have to come up with a game plan that works.
If we miss narrowly miss promotion, nobody will be saying “but at least we stuck to our principles.”
In Argyle’s defence, they have had quite a difficult Month with the number of games played and the distances travelled, but so have Swindon, Crewe and everyone else. Hopefully, with a long-weekend break and with no mid-week game, the players will be fresh again next Saturday at Bradford.